You can learn a lot by watching sports. Sports teaches us more about ourselves and how to interact with others than just about any other activity on earth. Watching my alma mater, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team dominate the Clemson Tigers last week shows just how competition and sportsmanship make up the fabric of who we are. Now, don’t get me wrong. Being a Notre Dame football fan isn’t always rainbows and unicorns. It means you’re in for a lifetime of heartache. The season always starts off with a rush of excitement. Your eyes glitter with hope and a twinkle of championship. It’s kind of like being a Cowboy’s fan, or a Bronco’s fan for that matter (especially this season—yikes). It’s similar to being in a long-term, toxic relationship on one side and in one with sanity on the other. Determining the difference between the two is painful. Above all, mind you, sports teach us that competing and speaking the language of interaction requires a particular dance. There exists a poetry of nuance, subtlety and in-your-face reality. But above all, sports demand respect. They lay the groundwork for man and womanhood. They manifest the appropriate interactions among a plethora of players and determine how we play…how we win. And how we lose.
When Notre Dame beat the amazing Clemson Tigers, both teams and players defined sportsmanship. They both complimented each other and dug deep within themselves to determine the winning and losing components of the game. Neither team, via their respective coaches or players, was condescending. With a strong inertial force, they found the resolve within themselves to find truth and meaning in their own determinant factors. Holding their heads up high, they echoed the eternal truth that their loss was their own and their win was determined by a matter of only a few plays. It was as if both teams, in complete agreement, felt that neither taunting nor putting down the other would make them better. They fought the battle and left it all on the field. Beyond that, nothing else matters.
Politicians could learn a lot by watching sports. We have too many sore losers. And sore winners too. Both belong in the same dung heap if you ask me. In high school, my sport was tennis. I was decent. Nothing to write home about. But it was singularly absorbing. I loved it. We always played: in good weather and in bad. We always competed. We learned much about how to compete at a young age. But most importantly, we learned that what defines us is how we end the match. We always… Always. Shook the hand of our competitor. Win or lose, you show respect for the player. You show respect for the game.
For examples of bad sportsmanship, one need not look further than former President of the United States, Donald Trump. Regardless of whether you feel that election was stolen, honestly deserved, or simply another election done well, the former president fails to recognize that were he to usurp and take back the presidency, he would be no better than the sorest of losers. One does not “take back power” just because it is perceived that the election was illegitimate. Finding and using loopholes to legitimize one’s ascension to power is a sneaky and subversive way to win. In sportsman’s terms, that’s cheating. Just because you don’t like the outcome of a hard-fought game, doesn’t mean you get to take the trophy away from the opponent. Even if you thought they cheated.
Just as repulsive, however, is when someone wins and showboats. This is for someone ill-mannered and reserved only for those for whom success has come too easily. Being excited for and reveling in your win is one thing. But you don’t get to gloat, and trash talk your opponent in public. Trash talk belongs in the locker room among your peers and teammates. Letting that venom spill into public view shows sloppiness, arrogance and pettiness. Anyone listening to the acceptance speech from the Governor Michele Lujan Grisham last week certainly recognized its cringe-worthiness. Making jokes about her opponent and making condescending remarks about a large majority of the population of New Mexico makes one wonder what happened to good sportsmanship? Don’t forget that your opponent is still one of your constituents and so are the hundreds of thousands (if not millions in a national race) of people who voted the other way. Take it on the chin. Stand tall but allow the humility of service to be your guiding principle.
Sore winners and sore losers are cut from the same cloth. Citizens expect and outright deserve elected officials who recognize the weightiness of their position. Those voters want those elected officials to work for and serve the needs of every citizen—those who voted for and those who voted against them. Rules determine how a society abides by and governs each other’s activities. Nowhere do rules govern more absolutely than in the realm of sport. Decency. Sportsmanship. Gratitude, and above all, duty to the people ought to be in the minds of any elected official. Politicians should take a lesson. Maybe they should watch college football every now and then. Go Irish.
Javier Sánchez is the former mayor of the City of Española, NM, and the co-owner of La Cocina New Mexican Restaurant.